Projected price for water treatment plant jumps $12 million

Rusted water containers and pieces of machinery mark the Lake Forest site that will be converted into the regional Baker Water Treatment Plant. The plant's price tag has gone up while its timeline has been delayed in recent months. ISAAC ARJONILLA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

New price breakdown

Five South County water districts will pay to build a treatment plant now expected to cost $90.4 million. They'll each kick in a percentage of funds equal to their requested share of the 28.1 million gallons of water the plant will produce daily.

•Moulton Niguel: 29.9 percent ownership, or $27 million to get 8.4 million gallons of water per day

•Santa Margarita: 29.9 percent ownership, or $27 million to get 8.4 million gallons of water per day

•Irvine Ranch: 24.1 percent ownership, or $21.8 million to get 6.8 million gallons of water per day

•El Toro: 11.5 percent ownership, or $10.4 million to get 3.2 million gallons of water per day

•Trabuco Canyon: 4.6 percent ownership, or $4.2 million to get 1.3 million gallons of water per day

Source: Irvine Ranch Water District

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LAKE FOREST – The projected price tag for a South County water treatment plant has jumped nearly 14 percent, or some $12 million since March, while the start of construction has been pushed back by several months.

Five water agencies partnering to build the Baker Water Treatment Plant say they're still onboard, confident the project will eventually pay for itself.

Some districts will have to find new funding sources if construction bids come in at the final engineer's estimate of $90.4 million, however, making it tough to say whether residents' water bills might be impacted by Baker's rising price.

"It's definitely gone up significantly," Bob Hill, general manager of the El Toro Water District, said – particularly since talks first started some six years ago. "We've been monitoring the costs as they've escalated and then reevaluated our funding alternatives. ... Even where we're at right now, I think from a financial perspective it's still a good reliability project."

The Baker plant is aimed at stabilizing South County water supplies by giving districts alternate sources beyond ever-pricier imported water.

The plant would be capable of converting some 28 million gallons of untreated water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California into drinking water each day. And in times of emergency, when that imported Metropolitan supply might be cut off, the Baker plant would be able to treat water directly from Irvine Lake.

Irvine Ranch Water District will own and operate the physical plant, which will be built in place of a shuttered facility on IRWD property in Lake Forest.

Santa Margarita, Moulton Niguel, El Toro and Trabuco Canyon water districts are pitching in to cover a share of the construction cost relative to the share of capacity they want to own.

The current price – discussed during a regional meeting Thursday – includes a $5 million anticipated increase in construction costs and $5 million more in construction management fees, IRWD spokeswoman Shannon Reed said. It also includes $2 million in contingency fees that Reed said weren't in the preliminary estimate of $79 million.

"There is not a specific reason," Reed said, when pressed about what caused construction management fees, for example, to double. "Estimates are only estimates."

Santa Margarita had planned to pay its share through bond funds taken out several years ago. With the $3.7 million increase in its expected contribution, spokeswoman Michele Miller said the district is allocating operating capital funds to make up the difference.

Moulton Niguel is also looking at other funding sources beyond banked bond funds for its additional $3.7 million share, general manager Joone Lopez said. That includes working with Santa Margarita to secure proceeds from Proposition 50, the "clean water" bill approved by voters in 2002.

"We'll have to explore that as we get to it," Lopez said. "We really won't know the true cost until the bids come in."

Trabuco Canyon has $4 million budgeted toward the project, general manager Hector Ruiz said, using a water reliability fund all district residents pay into each month. With the recent hike, the district's expected contribution is $200,000 over budget, which Ruiz said can also be pulled from banked reliability funds.

"The board has expressed a level of concern for the project's costs and schedule," Ruiz said, "but they still believe it's an important project."

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